Cyclist causes chaos at Newcastle 10k...

At a recent 10k road race in Newcastle in the North-East of England, runners got more than they bargained for when a random cyclist caused chaos. The cyclist who was dressed in fluorescent clothing entered the race course just before the starting gun sounded and the leading group of runners mistook him for a race official and mistakenly followed him to the right instead of carrying straight on! Hundreds of runners had run around 800m before they were finally stopped.

Race winner Ian Hudspith said afterwards: “I had not ran the race before so I just followed the leaders and lo and behold we were told by a marshall we were going the wrong way. When we eventually got back on track, I was in about 50th place and well down on the leaders who had gone the right way. It was shortly after that it was decided to halt the race and start all over again, which was the sensible thing to do and I as far as I could gather everyone accepted the decision. It is quite a difficult course with all the twists and turns in Exhibition Park and I would rather they just ran two circuits of the Moor. If they did I do not think there would be any problems with competitors going the wrong way.”

The unknown cyclist was not available for comment so it's not known how he or she felt about being followed by hundreds of runners on a Sunday morning.